9. Prison Slavery in Today’s USA

The US comprises less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet US prisons hold more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned globally. Many of these prisoners labor at twenty-three cents per hour, or similar wages, in federal prisons contracted by the Bureau of Prisons’ UNICOR, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation, which is the US government’s thirty-ninth largest contractor. As incarceration rates explode in the US, thousands are placed in solitary confinement, often for having committed minor disciplinary infractions within prison.

Censored News Cluster: The Police State and Civil Liberties

Sara Flounders, “The Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons,” Workers World, June 6, 2011, http://www.workers.org/2011/us/pentagon_0609.

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, “Cruel and Usual: US Solitary Confinement,” Al Jazeera English, March 19, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/201137125936219469.html.

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2011/11/07/prison-slavery-in-today’s-u-s-a/

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2011/04/04/solitary-confinement-in-the-us-cruel-and-usual-punishment/

Student Researchers: Leta Frolli and Taylor Wright (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluators: Sheila Katz and Patrick Jackson (Sonoma State University)

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Trencher

So much horse shit. You seem to be leaving out the many millions in Chinese prisons alone that are blatantly used as slave labor. The real numbers around the world wouldn’t serve your cause, of course, nor would the fact that so many other countries are quick to use the death penalty and practice mutilation as punishment for minor crimes.
Robo Mac

This man has a point. Look at North Korea for example. The whole country is at gun point and you even look the wrong way and your going too a re-education(concentration) camp. Those numbers can’t be counted because the very existence of these camps is largely ignored by most media.
Mike G

So you’ve checked out and verified these “real numbers” then? Perhaps you’d like to share with the rest of us? I suspect that some people just don’t like to have their preconceived notions (USA is the best country in the world™) disrupted.